Generalist marketing: The skills you should be looking for

Generalist marketing continues to be an asset to organisations that are in their growth lifecycle or are looking to further develop their offering. This is particularly true for organisations that are experiencing periods of change or instability. In a market constricted by budgets and investment, and where the discourse is changing to focus on cost savings, generalist marketing skills are key. Marketing teams and organisations are suffering from a skills gap when it comes to generalist marketing capabilities. So, why are generalist marketing skills important and how can businesses source, and win the best available talent?

We are seeing companies combine more positions that have generally been separated in the past. Suddenly, the division between ‘what is marketing’ and ‘what is digital’ or ‘what relationships can be led by a shopper marketer’ and ‘what relationships can be led by a category marketer’ aren’t so distinct to hiring managers. This is not to say that specialist skills are no longer desired, as the demand for technical SEO experience grows; but candidates who have been pulled and stretched or operated in smaller teams without specialised resource tend to be in vogue. 

What are the top generalist marketing skills?

When looking through a CV or a job application for one of your roles, there are key skills that you should be looking for that will be useful across many job roles in the marketing department. There is an expectation for a marketer to be busy and successful, and hiring managers can spot this through the demonstration of practice and perfection of their competency-based interview questions and the clear articulation of key results and achievements. 

  • From a generalist perspective, stakeholder management, or the change and influence of challenging relationships, continue to be a priority. 
  • The ability to manage multiple campaigns or deliver Omni-channel campaigns is of great importance to managers. 
  • For a junior or graduate marketer, whether in personal or professional life, it will be important to be able to express the value and opportunity of social media channels.

When hiring to develop your marketing team, the strongest requisite is to have your operational staff with broad experience. If you help your new recruits to build knowledge across both marketing and digital throughout the early stages of their career, it will help them to build a learning foundation. With this, it is also important to have a visionary leader who has a broad understanding of the value of multi-channel marketing and a sales team which feeds into this belief. 

The ideal traits and experience of a generalist marketer

From a brand perspective, a desired skill would be experience in both the marketing and digital landscapes. For a junior marketer, campaigns should be activated through traditional and digital channels, and there should be tangible achievements in both channels from the earliest moment in their career. For a commercial marketer, in shopper and category marketing, it will be important to have worked across a varied portfolio of retailers and not just within the top multiples. E-commerce and the discounters have dominated the press and media for some time. Businesses are requesting more knowledge and success within these channels versus just big businesses.

Good interview questions to ask a marketer

When interviewing a marketing professional, it is important to gauge how they would handle everyday situations and how they manage themselves in the workplace. Here are some example interview questions that can help you to build conversations around a candidate’s experience. 

  1. Describe a time when your communication and interpersonal skills helped in dealing with difficult clients/colleagues.
  2. Give an example of a win-win situation that you were able to negotiate.
  3. Give me an example of how you prioritise your projects.
  4. Tell me about a team experience that you found rewarding.

If you are interested in hiring top marketing talent to your business, please get in touch with one of our specialist recruitment consultants today. Alternatively, learn more about how an effective recruitment process can improve your marketing efforts.

James Nally
Senior Manager, Michael Page FMCG & Consumer